What We Couldn't Have Been
by BrieflySweet
Summary: Things that could've happened...but mostly things that couldn't have been. A series of oneshots with multiple Katniss and Career pairings (Katniss/Cato, Katniss/Finnick, Katniss/Gloss, & Katniss/Marvel). All genres: canon, AU, fantasy, mythology, etc.


**I write for more inspiration for my stories. Sometimes I just need to get some feelings out where they're frustration or stress. The first story is Katniss x Cato.**

**VICTOR **

**Summary: In Hunger Games universe. Cato won the 73rd Hunger Games, Katniss the 74th. (Peeta? Peeta who? Quarter Quell's twist was _not_ tributes reaped from Victors.) It's a been a couple of Hunger Games after that, and Katniss is at another social gathering in the Capitol, where she meets someone from a few years past.**

**Dark **

* * *

_10:22 p.m_.

Katniss's hand shakes as she watches the stream of liquid flow from the ornamental jug into her own glass. In the back of her mind somewhere, she estimates this to be her fifth glass. Or sixth. Seventh. Maybe eighth.

The lights of the room twinkle, as do all the colors on the people that glide within it. She's grateful, though, for the music. The allure of dancing has caused them to temporarily forget her.

Couples swirl in circles that are anything but graceful, making the dance floor look as if inhabited by creatures of the wild. _Their personalities match the way they dress_, Katniss thinks to herself. _Shallow. Crazy. Despicable._ She raises her glass to her lips rather clumsily, taking a long gulp.

"You drink much for your size." A man suddenly approaches her, fingers gently wrapping themselves around her glass. There is something distinct about his voice. She's heard it before somewhere. Glancing up, she finds herself looking at the Victor of the 73rd Hunger Games. She knew he was from 2, one of the Careers, but even she didn't know that the 73rd Hunger Games would turn out to be one of the most bloodthirsty Games in history.

She didn't know why he came up to her, but she hates the fact that he is trying to tug her glass of bliss out of her hands. He does so, and he holds it where he knows is high out of her reach.

"Give that back." She snaps, scowling at the signature smirk gracing over his lips. _So damn arrogant._

"As I said, you had a lot already." His smirk evolves into a grin.

Her scowl deepens. "Like that's any of your business." She's not really mad. She's just frustrated and _annoyed_, annoyed that life as a Victor is no better than the hell she had endured to get here, annoyed that she's seen far too many deaths, annoyed that she needs somebody but has nobody,_ annoyed_ that she can't go home, annoyed that she's forced to be here, forced to associate with these people, including a heartless, sadistic Career she couldn't wait to get away from. And he has the _nerve_ to smirk at her.

"But that can be changed," he whispers into her ear. More of a growl. She shivers, drawing a deep chuckle out of him. She was not expecting him to lean down and put her lips to his ear.

She eyes him suspiciously. "Go to hell."

Something seems to appear in his eyes. "I've been there."

To her surprise, he hands her back her glass of sloshing amber liquid. She hurriedly raises it to her lips, but he stops her from sipping at the last second and raises his own glass. " A toast."

Her gaze falls across the room, past many of the still-twirling colorful couples whom look the same to her, past many of the delicacies still waiting to be devoured, spread on many long white tables, past the musicians floating on strange clouds, onto her unusually-sober mentor. Haymitch was talking to a couple dressed in a pattern of colorful furs. He didn't seem to notice her at all. And Effie was no better, giggling with a bunch of similarly-dressed women surrounding her.

Katniss's gaze falls back on the man standing in front of her. She hesitantly clinks her glass against his and takes a long drink.

And another. And another. And another...

* * *

_11:14 p.m._

She teeters in her steps, and a couple times she almost drags him down with her. He tightens his hold, less she falls flat on her face. That _would_ be amusing, but...

They easily make their way through the hall and into the elevator. Everyone was still at the party.

He had just as many glasses as her, but perhaps his physique and experience with alcohol allows him to hold it down better. Katniss had much more than she planned to.

They don't speak as they stumble into the dark room. They don't even bother with the light switch (too many buttons, too little time anyways).

He changes the view so they are somewhere else, somewhere hidden from the colorful city. She falls onto the bed without so much of a sound. He knows that in the morning she will have a terrible headache and somewhere, subconsciously, she knows it as well.

He grabs the small bottle of pills from the nightstand and slips one onto her tongue. It falls past her lips easily. Then he takes one for himself and goes to the window, which now shows a view of a frosty, barren land underneath a full moon.

It was a place for the lonely to dwell.

* * *

_2:05 a.m._

She's awake, but she decides to keep her eyes closed, mentally bracing herself for the incoming headache. No, comparing pains she'd felt in the past to this would make everything even more agonizing. She opens her eyes, wide awake. It doesn't take long for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. It had been dark in her head.

Her dress feels stiff on her body as she raises herself up. She sees his shadow and glances over to where he is still sitting by the window. Her mind immediately falls into a state of panic.

"I'm not asleep." His voice startles her, though it shouldn't have.

She braces herself for his answer. "What happened?" She dares herself not to cringe.

He doesn't turn around. "You drank too much. I gave you one of those Capitol pills that clears a hangover. They don't always work." His voice remains impassive tone that has gotten a bit hoarse. "You slept all this time."

She believes him. Even though he was the ruthless, sadistic Career, she believes he didn't try anything while she was sleeping. She has her own reasons. But there was just something so sincere, so hollow about the way he sounds. He didn't sound like the Career he was. He sound like a fellow Victor. He's been deprived of a part of himself.

Maybe they are not that different after all.

But there are still things about him, things she doesn't understand. "Why did you give me the pill?" He could've very easily let her have a hangover. He could watch her suffer. He knows she wouldn't have cared.

He doesn't answer her, at least not right away.

In her frustration, she adds, "I know you care less about whether I live or die."

This has the desired effect. He spins around, almost madly, and grips her by the shoulders. Their eyes pierce into each other's. Neither one looks away. "You're right," he agrees coldly after the brief silence of the staring contest, "I didn't care. Why should I still?"

"Because you liked the last time." Her answer is immediate. To most her voice would have sounded emotionless, empty, but his Victor's ears detect a foreign emotion in them.

He lets go of her shoulders. As a Career, as a Career Victor, he was supposed to feel no emotion but victory. Pride. Glory. That was what he went after and that was what he earned. Winning wasn't supposed to come with any notions of regret.

As for her part, Katniss wants to forget. She has done many things, even knitting. (The needles had ended up in shards with tangled yards of yarn strewn all over the place.) Drinking's helped. But she wanted to be an original, and she didn't want there to be two Haymitches. Anyway, the fiery, spicy liquid takes her to some other place for only a while - and then comes back to mess with her head when the sun rose.

Everything else she tried, nothing has worked. Except for one thing. That one thing she tried last time, the year that she won. That one thing she hadn't dared to try again.

* * *

_Flashback_

_She remembers the desperation, the despair that one could feel radiate off her. But hollowed and shattered, she had no one else to turn to and nowhere to go. She didn't beg. She would never beg. She simply asked for a favor. Very un-Katniss-like, but we all need a little help sometimes._

_To her surprise, he agreed. He wasn't doing this for her, he made sure to let her know. He was doing this to make himself feel better. She responded just the same. And that night, she got to know Cato better than anyone else had known her._

_Afterwards, she didn't despise herself as much as she thought she would._

_"There's one thing I don't understand," he said to her that night when both of them laid there trying to catch their breath._

_"What's that?" she responded dryly._

_"Why me? I mean, I get I'm desirable and all..."_

_Despite everything, she had lightly punched him, and he had laughed a little. _

_"Giving it to you makes it a little easier for me to give up myself," she replied seriously, "Otherwise, I don't know if I could go back to the Capitol. I don't know if I could hate myself as much._

_"Why did you say yes?" she asked after a short while of silence._

_"I'm a man." He had answered as-matter-of-factly. Then he had added, "I needed to know, if I'm a man."_

* * *

To this day she wonders what he found out. Did his district spare him a few drops of humanity in his blood?

They didn't speak about it much after that. In fact, they didn't speak to each other very much at all. They were busy mentoring tributes or doing their own things in their own districts. (And Katniss swore she'd never do something like that again).

Now, a couple years later, Katniss finds herself heading in the very same direction as she did that night. Truly, that night did make it easier to give herself away but not by much. And it filled her with a certain emptiness, but this wasn't a vacant emptiness, it was a longing for something she was never going to have.

"You and I both knew that there were no strings attached," he says, his voice pulling her back into the present. He's standing in front of her now. He still towers over her by a few good inches.

"You've changed," she replies, looking up into his blue orbs.

"You have too," he says, closing their distance to look at her from up closer.

"For the worse or for the better...?" The orbs are now up close, and they go deeper than she'd ever imagined.(This is who she is now. The old Katniss is not like her, would never do anything like this, at least not without trying to detect some sort of threat first. But the old Katniss, the current Katniss would say, is dead. She's been dead for a long time.)

"Let's find out..."

Their lips meet, like that. It starts out as soft, openmouthed, loose, then forms into something heavier and deeper, something too intense for words. Hands make their way to the other's body and caress with forbidden touches, hair is tugged, their lips mold together and crash and their tongues slide like wave crashing against wave. Contact rekindles something deep and heated within them, something that might've been lacking in their lives these last couple of years.

She stops worrying about Haymitch, about Effie looking for her, about the entire country and lets herself feel everything she wants to feel, be everything she wants to be in this moment. In this moment she wishes she could live in forever, frozen in time. Because this moment gives her a kind of freedom, because this moment allows her to forget and allows her to_ feel_, something she hasn't put much effort into for a long time. In other words to describe, this moment is perfection. Or as close as she could get.

Only when she could no longer feel the warmth of her dress does she remember what she's gotten herself into. Suddenly her vow to herself comes flashing in her mind like a signal of red. Shocked, she scrambles from her position underneath him and makes a beeline for her dress. In his surprise, she wriggles out easily.

"What the hell?" Cato roars, and she didn't remember the last time seeing him so angry (at least in person). He snatches her dress up, having it closer to him. She edges to a corner of the bed, careful not to get too close to him.

"This was just a way to make myself feel better," she at last hears herself croak the words aloud, "So if I change my mind - "

He growls and makes his move. Before she finishes, she finds herself pinned underneath him, his hands and knees holding her in place. "Don't forget," he said, looking her directly in the eye, "Who I am. And what I am capable of doing."

How could she forget - at the end of the day, no matter what words said, what was done, he was still a Career, a born and bred killing machine. Though a Hunger Games can (and will) change how people view the world, he was still raised from birth with one purpose. Suddenly she realizes just who he is, who she's dealing with.

"I am a coward," she says with such hatred and conviction and disgust that it causes him to divert his attention to her, completely dropping the dress on the floor. She doesn't scramble to pick it up as he expects her to, but simply turns her head to the side and does not meet his eyes. "If I wasn't such a coward, I'd have eaten those berries and died in the arena."

He offers her a sad smile, one that isn't meant to be seen on Careers. "You know, everyone back home trains for this their entire lives. It's considered an honor to partake in the Games. You're finally living your dream one day until it suddenly turns into a horrid, living nightmare. You've been trained to kill, your sole purpose is to win the Games." He turns himself over. "And then you realize that no one ever wins the Games."

When he stops, the only sounds in the room are their breathing. She turns to him.

He continues, "You realize that all your life may have been a fraud and you are nothing more than a piece in the Capitol's Games. You realize you're not as special as you thought you were. You and the other districts...you aren't so different. And the Capitol has known it all along."

Hearing his words strikes Katniss silent. She may have had to fight to survive all her life, to hunt her next meal and to live on a day-to-day basis, but she knows that it was her life and that it was completely real. She's known all her life what the Games are and what they stand for. She loathes them, but she's known all her life. Her life was as obscure from the Games as possible.

He, on the other hand, just figured out about the Games a couple years ago and realized what kind of things he had spent all his life spent training for. But by then, it was too late; he was already a Victor.

"I will never understand how it feels to be a Career," Katniss admits. It's her sympathy. It's the best she can offer him, the most simple choice of words. But he nods his head. It was enough.

"It's not as if you and I had many choices," he replies bitterly, "I realized we're not so different after all, you and I. We cannot make our mark without it belonging to someone else. No one cares enough to let us."

His words make her feel something. _He's right, _she realizes, _This is our life, but it doesn't belong to us. _Her mind wanders to District 12, where she thinks of her family and Gale (she can't bear to think about Peeta, not after watching the Hunger Games this year) and the way their faces changed when they learned she frequents visits to the Capitol. All those emotions - shock, anger, horror, embarrassment, shame, sadness, overtaking the faces of people she loves. They only knew what and when and where, but they didn't bother finding out why.

Her only console then was the sympathetic face of drunken Haymitch Abernathy, her mentor and now friend. But her friends and family, people important in her life, people most important _to_ her life, they don't understand. And they won't. It's another Victor thing. It's why she hasn't picked up the phone in a while. (They haven't called either, which is fine with her.)

And the boy next to her - no, man next to her, the man with the sword, is a fellow Victor. He may not know what it's like to be starving and he may not understand District 12, but right now he understands her better than anybody in 12. He is just as broken as she is.

She contemplates this. Two broken pieces don't always make a whole, but as far as the old saying goes, two is better than one. At least two is so much less lonelier than one.

"_I care_."

The two words are enough to make him open his closed eyes. He rolls around and faces her. "I thought you'd fallen asleep."

"I care, Cato." As fireless as her eyes are, they are deep and in this moment that makes them all the more intense. In the dark, Cato's eyes meet her own and they gaze at the souls sitting behind the orbs, at the lonely, broken souls that have been sitting by themselves for so long. _Show me how to care again. Show me what caring feels like. Don't tell me, show me, if you care. _

"You know, you really have changed," he murmurs, reaching a hand to stroke her cheek. His large palm is warm and calloused, more than the last time, more than she expects. She closes her eyes as he runs his hand gently down her face.

He runs into a tear. It comes out of the blue, out of nowhere, but there was an actual tear on Katniss Everdeen's face. He knows what it means. She's not weeping for herself nor for him. She weeps for them all, for their past, present, and future. There was a whole world of emotions within that one teardrop. He has learned that the precious bead was not weakness. He kisses it away, tasting its saltiness on the tip of his tongue. He runs his tongue up and down her neck. At the same time, she brings her arms around him.

And kisses him.

Their kiss is bittersweet. It's full of them and full of everything they are tonight, and full of them letting go. It's pure, raw, genuine, powerful. It says things words never will. It's pure them, pure Cato and pure Katniss, stripping each other down to the very basics of human thoughts and feelings. And needs.

They kiss harder and wrap their arms tighter, each clinging to the other as if their life depended on it (perhaps it did, or at least their sanities did). They roll over and over in the bed, getting tangled with the sheets. They each battle to be on top, each one battle for dominance because that's the way they are. They can't be tamed into a pretty gilded cage. The bejeweled leashes the Capitol tries to tie around their necks cannot hold them down, for this is who they are.

Amidst their battle, they find their chests touching in an unforgettable embrace. Breathing hard, they exchange heated glances. One of his hands caresses her skin, gently, much more gentle than she believes a Career could be.

"You know, I always thought Careers were bloodthirsty," she teases him, as much as she could tease, anyways. He is surprised. She never teases.

"Sometimes we have a different kind of thirst," he replies, his eyes darkening to a midnight hue as he goes to press a kiss on her chest. "And sometimes, we have a hunger as well..."

He comes forward and their lips crash together again. Their hands are everywhere at once, her small one going over muscles, his large ones feeling skin. Each one of them is marked by scars that fascinates, not disgusts, the other. Scars are memories, a story to tell. They want someone to tell their stories to. They want somebody to this isn't enough. They need more. They need each other.

His last coherent thought was, _Maybe I have something to live for after all. _Hers was, _Haymitch will strangle me. _

They drown in each other. He can't tell which part of their union is his, and she can't tell hers.

Entire worlds could collide, everything could disappear in an instant and they'd still be wrapped up in each other. Intertwined, they are one. This is their own world, their moment. For once, everything belongs to them.

Katniss throws her head back, arching her back. She offers him everything she has left. She has nothing else, nothing more. This is her moment. Hers. And his.

Theirs.

Alone.

Together.

He accepts her gift. It's actually the best gift he has ever received.

And he shows her his appreciation.

* * *

_Sometime after 2:05 a.m._

They lie in the dark, letting the silence comfort them. By now most of their sweat has dried.

He looks at her, looks at her head that lies on his chest.

"If we were in the same Hunger Games, would you kill me?" she blurts out. She'd been thinking it, but she actually hadn't planned on asking right out.

The old Cato would have answered in a heartbeat. This one needs a little time to think. "To survive, yes," he admits. "At least the old me would have. Now, I...I don't know."

She just nods in understanding, unoffended. His honesty was something that survived the Hunger Games.

Then he asks something unexpected. "Would you kill me?"

She bites her lip. "I guess the old me would have, to survive. But now... I don't know."

He smiles bitterly at her. "You hated me when you first met me."

"You hated me too. I thought you were a monster."

"Do you still think so?"

She looks him in the eyes, then looks away. "You're much more than that," she mumbles.

A smile spreads across his face, separating his cheeks of light freckles. The smile is boyish, warm, enduring. Captivating. Un-Career-like.

She looks at him and sees the smile on his face, which quickly vanishes as does his sudden interest in her. But out of the corner of her eye, she still sees something in his eyes.

"But not by much." She lightly punches his arm, for effects.

"By a lot." he smirks.

"_So damn arrogant_." She punches him again.

He actually chuckles, and so does she. She remembers something once they settle down again, one of his arms lounging behind his head and one reaching to feel her embrace.

She hesitates before speaking. "You know how...on our first night... wait, why are you smirking?"

"You're blushing hard."

"Shut up...bastard." Punch. "Anyways... remember when I asked you why you had said yes?"

The mood turns a bit quieter. A bit heavier.

He nods. "I remember that quite well."

"I'm serious! You said you were a man, but then you added that you need to know if you were. What did you mean?"

He ponders, then a hand suddenly finds itself on her shoulder. "I think you know fully well what I meant, Katniss."

She purses her lips. "But I want to know what you've found out."

Her fingers, stiff and calloused and small from her days of arrows, find their way to his. They feel his hand, feel his grasp, scars and all.

"I'm still searching for answers." His voice has toned down a couple octaves including that of the volume range. A streak of moonlight steals through the small opening of their curtains. It illuminates part of his hair, making it faintly glow. His lashes hang gracefully over his downcast eyes. She remembers when he would dump dollops of gel into his hair. She remembers when his eyes were cold, but also full of life.

She knows what it's like to have your identity taken from you, no matter who you were.

His eye and hair color used to remind her of another boy's, but not anymore. Color did not matter, she realized. What matters is what they express.

"You may be a Career, but you are certainly not a monster." Her voice is barely a whisper. It's barely there. It's just some candy for any mere breeze passing by, a wisp of existence fading away.

But he has heard it. Shocked, he turns to look at her (not looking at him). But still he looks at her. "To be honest, Firegirl," he whispers back, "I wouldn't have an easy time killing you if we were thrown into the Games. Especially not after now. Not after tonight."

She feels her throat dry up like a well as she slowly turns her head to meet his gaze. Then, slowly, her arms tentatively wrap around his neck. His arms hug her waist, and he pulls her closer to him until she is in his chest.

They sit in silence. This silence is not a cold, calculating silence, but a warm, heartfelt one at that. It speaks louder than words. They understand it more than any word. In someone else's arms in the dark, no one exists to judge them.

"I'm playing with Fire," his voice cracks as he finally attempts a joke. His voice did not sound light and playful, but she knows it's simply not him to be light and playful.

He couldn't see the smile that spread on her face, in spite of herself. "That joke was bad, even for you."

He stares at her, then laughs quietly. She joins him. Their laughter is like the music of the night, collaborating with their previous silence to produce a harmonizing melody. (There was something so just lovely about a melody, even the haunting ones.)

She remembers when she stopped singing. It brings back memories too painful to bear.

But strangely, she doesn't find it so hard to want to sing anymore. She used to only sing for her family.

But now, she glances at him, the Victors are part of her family now. In a way, the whole bunch of Victors is like one big, crazy family. When they have no one else, they have each other.

She surprises them both when she begins to hum. He listens, silent but appreciating. She can't help but think that he seems to appreciate it more than anyone else before.

He is the only one who appreciates who she is now, she thinks to herself. And it shouldn't, but it brings to her a comfort she finds difficult to describe.

She shifts her head near his shoulder to listen to the beating of his heart.

In a cold, silent world, music is the gift of warmth.

Maybe it is just her imagination, but sometime in the night a giant hand takes her own and caresses it with gentle, almost-lovingly strokes that went against everything it had been taught.

* * *

She ignores the voice in the back of her head that tells her she shouldn't. He does the same.

The past couple of days seems to have made life more bearable for them both. The days are spent looking forward to the nights, nights of hushed whispers and heated moments and tangled sheets and sweat that removes poison from their systems.

Eventually, days turn into weeks, and weeks into months. And somehow, months work their magic and they magically turn into years. (Their magic is rather plain, but it has worked wonders for countless generations. Some refer to it as Time.)

If Haymitch has noticed, he hasn't said anything at all. In fact, he seems to be sober a little more often now. She's once seen him holding one of those fruity drinks tipped with a little umbrella. Effie has started wearing less makeup. Cato has less nightmares. She does as well.

Now Katniss has less room on her bed and more feelings in her than she ever thought possible. Some of the feelings she thought she'd never feel again after "winning" the Games.

They see each other more frequently.

Often they are quiet, but more than often they talk. They (slowly) learn to talk about just anything and everything. With every visit she finds it a little easier to communicate. A little easier to live. The walls she's worked so hard to build stand strong, and Cato helps her build them against the rest of the world. Who needs them?

It's not so hard for them to talk. They understand what the other is saying. They have the means to understand each other, even if they would've never dreamed about it in the past.

They are not sure how much time passes, and they don't care. They speak as they please, come and go as they please, stay as they please because it pleases them. It is one of the little things that can please them. When they speak, they have someone who listens as nobody had ever listened before.

Sometimes they communicate without saying a word at all.

* * *

**I apologize for the vanilla ending. I wasn't trying to write beautiful fanfiction, this is not my best piece, I agree, but it's definitely one of the darkest things I've written, probably one of the most grotesque. You know how sometimes you just need to let everything out? Let things go?**

**Anyways, you decide if it's canon, AU, or something else entirely. (If obstacles the characters went through are a little different than the original, it can still change them a lot. This is**** probably crack fiction. That's okay.)**

**This particular story was inspired by a Carbon Leaf song, a one-shot called Of the Living, the song "Daylight" by Maroon 5, and a one-shot called The Art of Winning. All four of them are incredibly beautiful works of art. **

** Next one shot will be either a Marvel/Katniss, a Gloss/Katniss, or a Finnick/Katniss. Oh and it will probably be lighter, at least a little. I'm going to try to shorten them, although it didn't quite work out for this one. **


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